High-Quality Adaptive Bitrate Video Through Multiple Links

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the download of the video file is part of a streaming process download and further comprising determining, by the computing device, that the streaming process download is at a steady state condition.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the determination that the streaming process download is at a steady state is made based on a comparison of (a) a download bit rate of a video segment to a current segment video encoding rate and (b) the download bit rate of a video segment to a next higher quality segment video encoding rate.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the determination that the streaming process download is at a steady state is further made based on a comparison of the download bit rate of the video segment to a next lower quality segment video encoding rate.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first time is determined based on a size of the next segment identified in metadata received by the computing device using a hypertext transfer protocol head method.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on an estimate of time to download a given video segment of the video file through the network at a steady state bit rate corresponding to a steady state condition.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on an estimate of time to download a given video segment of the video file through the network using at least the second path.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on a first estimate value for time in which to finish download of a given video segment of the video file through the network.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on a time that is a combination of the first estimate value and a second estimate value for time to download the given video segment of the video file through the network at a steady state bit rate corresponding to the steady state condition.

11. The computing device according to claim 10, wherein the download of the video file is part of a streaming process download, and the processor is further configured to determine that the streaming process download is at a steady state condition.

12. The computing device according to claim 11, wherein the determination that the streaming process download is at a steady state is made based on a comparison of (a) a download bit rate of a video segment to a current segment video encoding rate and (b) the download bit rate of a video segment to a next higher quality segment video encoding rate.

13. The computing device according to claim 12, wherein the determination that the streaming process download is at a steady state is further made based on a comparison of the download bit rate of the video segment to a next lower quality segment video encoding rate.

14. The computing device according to claim 10, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on an estimate of an encoding rate for a given video segment.

15. The computing device according to claim 10, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on an estimate of time to download a given video segment of the video file through the network at a steady state bit rate corresponding to a steady state condition.

16. The computing device according to claim 10, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on an estimate of time to download a given video segment of the video file through the network using at least the second path.

17. The computing device according to claim 10, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on a first estimate value for time in which to finish download of a given video segment of the video file through the network.

18. The computing device according to claim 17, wherein the time is determined to be of sufficient duration based on a time that is a combination of the first estimate value and a second estimate value for time to download the given video segment of the video file through the network at a steady state bit rate corresponding to the steady state condition.

20. The system according to claim 19, wherein the download of the video file is part of a streaming process download and the programming instructions further comprise instructions to determine that the streaming process download is at a steady state condition.

21. The method according to claim 1, wherein the video file is being downloaded via an adaptive bit rate (ABR) session.

22. The method according to claim 1, wherein the sum of the first time and the remaining time is determined to be greater than or less than the second time responsive to a session of the download being in a steady-state.